Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1887-10-01


1881 '''''' '-'-0''i'
Tobaeco.......... 81, s95 1868
......L ", lsO 26gl ........
A koku is SIS bushels; Ala tan-one acre.
kin-l1a TBS avoirdupois.
AVERAGE YIELD-oTHER LEADING CROPS.
If these figures be correct, the average
yield per acre is 277S bushels of rice, 10
bushels of barley, and 12.9 bushels of
wheat. This last rather exceeds the aver
age of the United States, which is GER
tainly remarkable, considering the very
poor quality of the soil, and remembering
that the land has been steadily cropped for
centuries. The sugar / understand is made
from sorghum.
In addition to the products enumerated
In the table there are raised vast quantities
of beans, lentils, millet, and also vans and
other roots, and considerable amounts of
grapes, oranges, persimmons and other
fruits. 1t will be observed that grass and
hay cut no figure in the yield of the land
This is due to the lack of domestic ami
mails. Being almost without cows and
horses, they have no need of hay.
A glance at the figures shows us that
rice is the staple food of the people. Next
come barley and rye, and after them,
wheat, unless beans and lentils is still
larger crop. This fact that rice is the
great product of the soil, has, | think,
shaped the style and fashion of their agri-
culture. Rice must be flooded with water
in its infancy, and needs profuse irrigation
in all its stages.
EXTENSIVE AGRICULTURAL TERRACE
WORK.
To this end the land must be level and
the supply of water abundant. These
customs have modified all the agriculture
of Japan. All the cultivated land is care
fully leveled, no matter whether it is hill
or valley. The hills are terraced at i'm
mense labor, and the plains are cut up into
innumerable little level plats of ground of
all shapes and sizes, according to the slope
and shape of the surface. Around Toxic
or Kioto the hills are not much cultivated,
but back of Nagasaki they are shaped into
an endless number of terraces-little,
narrow strips of land, often not over six or
eight feet wide, and carefully sustained by
bank walls of stone. The traveller in Ger
many remembers the terraced vineyards Of
the Rhine and Moselle, with wonder at
the labor spent in creating the soil, but
these are nothing to the care taken to reduce
the Nagasaki hills to a condition where
they are capable of japanese cultivation
These terrace walls are often five or six
feet high and of stone; but in the valleys
the walls are of earth, frequently not over
a foot or eighteen inches high-just enough
to reduce the surface to level.
These little plats of ground of course can
not be plowed, they are generally too small,
and are turned over by hard manual labor,
| the tools used being a heavy hoe with
long blade like garden spade. You may
often see women, as well as men, welding
| this huge implement, which must be very
severe days work. Occasionally YOU see
man ploughing some unusually large field
| with single bullock or pony hitched to
very rude and primitive pillow.
When the ground is ready for the seed
it is carefully drilled in rows, say twelve or
fifteen inches apart if it is grain. When
the ground Will stand it, wheat or barley
may be sown in October and then in the
spring rice plants will be started in another
piece of ground, and when the wheat is
harvested in June the rice takes its place.
being set by hand, and by October the rice
crop is ready for cutting. If the farmer
has land varying much in moisture he will
plant his upland with grain and his wet
lowland with rice alone. The farmer sells
his rice and eats his grain and his beans,
| for the rice is more profitable to sell.
TILE GRAINS ARE NOT FIGURED,
But are usually boiled like rice and eaten
whole, or if ground, are eaten in unleav-
| ened cakes, but arenever fermented. There
are little gristmills on the farms. some
| times driven by water from the irrigation
ditch, and sometimes dragged round by a
bullock, but they are very crude, and make
a very, coarse, dark flour, which is eaten
without much boiling. The wheat is dark,
damp and poor. 1t is mostly consumed in
Japan, though some is exported every year
to Shanghai and Nladivostock.
| have said third crop is sometimes
harvested. This would be a crop of root
vegetables, which is planted between the
rows of grain and ripens about the same
time.
GATHERING THE CROPS.
When the grain is ri pc it is cut by hand
tied up in small sheaves and usually hung
up to dry. Rice is always wet, being often
cut In standing water, and it made me SILVER
TO see the poor peasants, men and women,
standing IN the cold water and mud up to
their knees, in November, gathering the
| last OF the rice crop. When cut and bound,
1t Is taken to some high spot of the valley
and there left to dry. Sometimes it is built
up IN the form of stack around tree, or
pole planted in the ground
| THRAsHING AND CLEANING.
| When dry, the peasant packs it on his
back TO his hut, and there the grain is
separated from the straw. This is rarely
done by thrashing, but usually by hatchei-
ling; the straw holding the ripe grain is
drawn over board, from which project
sharp iron spikes, very near together.
These spikes comb the grain, or rice. cut
| OF the heads of straw. The New England
farmer will remember splitting up corn
huslls for mattresses by the same process.
! When the grain heads are separated
from the straw the chaf is removed from
the kernel by pounding in a wooden NOR
tar. The pestles are attached to long
levers, at the end of which man works
the machine as If in a treadmill. often
with no clothing except a breech-cloth.
| Then the grain is famed to blow away the
chat, and when clean it is packed in bags
made of rice straw and is ready to GO to
market.
IRRIGATION WORKS.
was very much surprised at the ex-
tent of irrigation praeticed in Japan, and.
as / said before, the fashion must have
arisen frem the widespread cultivation of
rice, which requires ii, although the rain
fall of Japan is very opious-observation
ranging from Il inches at Osaka to 70
inches at Yellohama-being pesrly double
ours. Their irrigation works are most
massive and costly in thesr character, and
are spread oves every part of the country
that / visited. | saw large e1nhankments
of earth like sopae double track railway.
stretching across valleys, erected to carry
some canal for irrigation; elsewhere the
little mountain streams were taken from
their beds and carried in bitches winding
round the hills like our mining bitches till
they poured their contents on some narroY
terrace, or flooded some rice field in the
plain. The money and labor that have
been expended in leyeling the fields and
providing them with supply of water are
simply amazing; the massive character
and wide extent Of these artificial water
courses testify not only to the industry of
the people, but to the antiquity of their